Matt and I had a very nice trip today up to Bill Moore Lake. It was a great day to get out of the heat and head up to timberline! For a day like today, I was surprised at how little trail traffic there was.

It only took about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the lake. We had lunch and just chatted for a couple hours, enjoying the 70 degree temperatures and cool breeze. While we were hiking out, we stopped and photographed some beautiful flowers.

Back in the parking area, we met Dave and his truggy, which started as an 88 runner. He hangs with Mike Casky and Christo Slee, and was at Cruise Moab with us earlier this year. He's got dual cases, 5.29s, 37s, etc.

It was a beautiful day for wheeling, and a great shakedown for my freshened engine/4-speed conversion. I really like having gears and compression to be able to go down hills without having to brake, and was in second and even third much of the day. First is an awesome improvement over the old 3-speed, especially with the 3-speed case. My only issue is that the 2F valve cover gasket doesn't work with the F valve cover, and there's a pretty good leak going on there. But by the time I got home I now have 100 miles on the clock with no major issues.

When we got back down to the reservoir at the trailhead, a couple in a 2004 runner had a bad flat and didn't have the special head to get the lug nut off so they could put their spare on. We ended up using Matt's plug kit and compressor to fix their tire. It was a pretty good sidewall gash and took three plugs to stuff it. Then, along with a couple in a Disco, we followed them down to potato springs. The Disco had the following on their license plate: "Group W". Bonus points to those of us old enough to know exactly what that means :-)

The traffic on I-70 was brutal, so we took the frontage roads back. They were marginally better except for the stop sign in Downieville. All in all, an excellent day!

Don't forget, I'll be leading a run up there on Saturday, August 19th. We meet at the burger king in Downieville at 10:00 AM, CB channel 4 until we get too much other chatter and have to switch to 5. I'll post this up on the run planning section shortly...